Best of Brothers
By: Logan O.

I was a kid who was really hard on him-self (I still am) but my brother was really hard on himself even worse than me. He would get really mad at himself sometimes for things that weren’t his fault. He sometimes would hit his head or even not talk to someone if he did something wrong in sports.

So I’ve always wanted to be like him scrutinizing what he does. I want to be identical to him with his intensity and his drive to get what he wants. So one day I decided that I am going to be really hard on myself to the point it was vague, which was one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

One baseball game I played horrible I went 0-4 with 2 errors in the field. I was frustrated I wanted to hit myself in the head with my bat. My brother walks up to me and exclaims,

“ Stop being so hard on yourself.”
What! He is the person that taught me to be hard on myself and he is the on that is telling me to stop being so hard on myself! I was outraged, what he said was completely absurd. I was so mad my thoughts seemed vague. Right then, he was my adversary.

“ You are hard on yourself!” I yell.
“Yah, I am,” he says
“So why can’t I be like that?” I question him.
“ Because you would be like me and I don’t want you to be like me.” He says which makes me want to retract under a rock like a lizard hiding from a predator. I felt ashamed and felt like a total idiot for saying that, I said it absentmindedly. But for then I managed to stay intact.

That’s when I realize that you never have to be like someone that you think is better than you, be you. I had also realized that being me is a lot better than being someone else. That’s what I learned, maybe you want to be like someone but they don’t want you to be like them.

Maybe they don’t want you to be like them because if everyone was the same the world would be weird and dull. Or just because the fact that they think that they are not a good person and they don’t want you to end up like them.

I still have a passion for the game and still get mad when I do something wrong. But his time instead of trying to be identical to my brother I am trying the best I can to be like me. I’m playing like me now, not like him. My attitude is like mine now and not like his.
So from now on I never try to be like my brother in every way I try to be like me, because no matter how hard I try I will never be him, and no matter how hard he tries he will never be me. This is my story about the best of brothers.